ATTEMPTS AT RAISING 9/11 AWARENES:RICHARD GAGE – TORONTO HEARINGS

As mentioned in previous installments
the 9/11 Truth Movement consists essentially of two groups. One which
concentrates on evidence which is incompatible with the official 9/11
Commission Report and limits itself to the attempt to bring these to the
attention of the general public. It does not engage in speculation as to who
did what but merely presents facts which require better explanations than the
government has provided. The second group approaches the problem from the viewpoint
of a murder investigation – nearly 3000 innocent civilians were, after all,
deliberately killed in a mass murder of previously unprecedented magnitude – and
in the popular phrase as a “who-done-it?” Since this approach is obviously more
speculative at this time it readily invites flights of fancy.

Although both groups demand a genuine
unbiased, independent international investigation of this crime, the strategy
how to achieve this goal differs.The
“fact-finding” group believes that it can be most readily accomplished when the
improbability of the government’s theory in regard to the destruction of the
Twin Towers and WTC7, as proposed by NIST and which has become official dogma,
is clearly demonstrated. I emphasize the word “theory” because the government
has never provided proof of how this disaster happened. The currently advocated
sequence of events was not derived from facts obtained from the crime scene but
from computer models performed under the auspices of the government. This must
be clearly kept in mind when the results are evaluated. If it can be proven
that impact of the planes and subsequent fires could not have caused the total
destruction of the WTC, with nearly free fall speed, the implications are
serious indeed. The only reasonable alternative for the events we all saw on television
is that some type of explosives had been used to bring the buildings down. But
if this had been the case, the destruction was deliberate. This is a thought
most of us don’t want to entertain because it renders the government’s statement,
that Osama bin Laden with 19 Muslim hijackers had alone achieved this feat, untenable.
Yet, unless we think the unthinkable our government will have license to potentially
keep deceiving us in other matters; especially in regard to the War on
Terrorism, which is still pursued by the Obama administration.

This is what makes the 9/11 catastrophe
so important. But every effort is made by the media and our politicians “not to
go there.” Nevertheless, there are some determined individuals who will not let
the matter rest in spite of the personal attacks they are subjected to as a
result. One of these is the architect Richard Gage. He founded the group
Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth in 2006, and has currently 1,704
signatures by these professionals demanding a new investigation. Mr. Gage has
been extremely active in bringing the signatories’ point of view to the
attention of the general public and has earlier this year taken a multi-city
bus lecture tour from Vancouver across Canada to Montreal. Subsequently he
toured most of the major cities in the US showing the video “9/11 Explosive
Evidence – Experts Speak Out.” Salt Lake was not on the schedule and if I had
not been an Internet surfer I would not have known about it.

Since the mainstream media have failed
to adequately provide information on this topic an international conference was
held last September on the campus of Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. In
contrast to the usual conferences with speakers and discussion it was modeled
to some extent on the Grand Jury concept as it exists in the United States.
Since my European readers may not be familiar with it let me quote from
Wikipedia:

“Unlike a trial
jury – which operates under the unanimous system – a grand jury can indict a
defendant with a majority vote. Moreover, trial juries will decide whether a
defendant is guilty or not guilty of the crime in question, whereas, a grand
jury will listen to evidence and decide if a suspect should be charged with a
crime. As a result, the grand jury is responsible for determining probable
cause, and not “innocence” or “guilt.”

Because the
grand jury’s primary responsibility is to determine probable cause, the body
will not hear all the evidence or conflicting arguments associated with the
case. The information provided to the grand jury is delivered by the
prosecutor; this individual must present conflicting evidence for the grand
jury to accurately determine probable cause. The suspect’s lawyers (the defense
team) are not allowed to be present during this evaluation process. The defense
team cannot present evidence, but may consult with witnesses outside the
courtroom.”

Ordinarily a Grand Jury consists of at
least 12 members but at the Canadian Hearings four “panelists” served in this
function. There was no prosecutor but the speakers were the “witnesses” who
laid out their case to the panel which would subsequently render a verdict
whether or not probable cause existed for this case to be further investigated.
It was envisioned that the witnesses would provide their written reports to the
panel members who would then issue their final opinion. The proceedings
including the panel’s verdict would subsequently be published.

Members of the assessment panel were: FerdinandoImposimato,Honorary President of the Supreme Court of Italy. Herbert
Jenkins, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at McMaster
University. Richard B. Lee,Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the
University of Toronto. David Johnson,Professor
Emeritus of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Tennessee. The
names of the witnesses and their qualifications will be listed in the context
of their presentations. The date of the four-day Hearings was determined in a
manner that the last presentations were on September 11, 2011, the 10th
anniversary of the catastrophe.Ryerson University did not sponsor the
meeting but leased facilities to the organizers and helped in a variety of
other ways.

Graeme MacQueen a Professor of Religion,
who had retired from McMaster University and was a member of the steering
committee for the Hearings, was interviewed by CTV News about two weeks
prior to the meeting. The
segment was introduced by Jacqueline Milczarek and the interesting aspect was
the banner under her image. It read, “911 skeptics will meet in Toronto” and in
smaller letters “Conspiracy theorists to converge on Ryerson University.” When
Professor MacQueen was introduced we were not told that he has been an
academician for 30 years, the banner read instead: “Graeme MacQueen” and
underneath “Conspiracy Theorist.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7hkIA1UdXM.
Thus, any dissent from official dogma receives automatically a pejorative label
by the media, even in Canada. Characteristically this is the case before the
guest on the program has even uttered the first sentence. The media
indoctrination has been so successful that no second thought is given to the
potential substance of what the program’s guest might say. We have, therefore,
a situation where anyone, regardless of professional status, who merely
questions specific aspects of the official account, is automatically a
conspiracy theorist with all of its negative connotations. This is the problem
the Toronto Hearings was also intended to overcome.

Since the official publication of the
Proceedings and the verdict by the panelists on the merits of the individual
presentations have not yet appeared, I shall summarize the information from the
DVD “The Toronto Hearings on 9/11 – Uncovering Ten Years of Deception,” as
produced by “The International Center for 9/11 Studies and Press for Truth” http://www.ic911studies.org/Home_Page.html.
It can be obtained from http://torontohearings.org
and the site also provides further details.

As far as speakers and topics are
concerned they were “bookended” by Mrs. Laurie van Aicken who lost her husband
and the father of her children in the destruction of the North Tower and Mr.
Bob McIlvain who lost his son, likewise in the North Tower. Mrs. van Aicken was
instrumental in creating the New Jersey group of widows, which has been
somewhat derisively called “the Jersey girls” and was discussed in the June 1
installment. She related their quest for clarity about the disaster and the
difficulties experienced with the 9/11 Commission. She was “outraged” that Philip Zelikow, the executive director of the Commission,
had allowed President Bush and Vice President Cheney to testify together
without a transcript and recording devices.The ladies had hoped for a real investigation to take place and were
concerned about Zelikow’s appointment because he had major
conflicts of interest. Not only was he a personal friend and closely associated
with Condoleezza Rice, but he had also served on President Bush’s transition
team and had retained close White House ties. Mrs. Van Aicken regarded it as
incredible that there has never been a real independent investigation, even 10
years later, and wished for one to take place in a real courtroom where there
is subpoena power and cross-examination of witnesses.

This
sentiment was echoed by Mr. McIlvain who stated that he had lost faith in the
9/11 Commission, 90% of whose hearings he faithfully attended. He “got disgusted”
when he heard National Security Advisor Condi Rice’s testimony. “She
filibustered and talked nonsense. Everyone was smiling; they shook
hands, that’s when I lost my cool. . . . The investigation was a total
sham. Even some of the commissioners admitted that it was a sham.” An objective
nonpartisan investigation was required.

I will now present some key aspects not in
a chronologic manner, as seen on the video, but group them in terms of the
topics which were covered. Since the destruction of the WTC is iconic for the
9/11 disaster it was extensively discussed by six different speakers. Richard
Gage, the above mentioned San Francisco architect, provided an overview. He pointed out that the scientific method is required to
validate a given hypothesis but this was not done by NIST. Destruction of steel
frame high rise buildings by fire has never occurred in the past in spite of
the fact that some buildings had been exposed to fire for considerably longer
durations. As an example he showed the Beijing Mandarin Oriental Hotel fire of
2009. The steel structure remained standing in spite of the inferno having
lasted considerably longer than the WTC fires. Furthermore, whenever buildings
did collapse from “natural” causes they would not do so with nearly free fall
speed and they would fall over onto one side. The debris are recognizable e.g.
after earthquakes, and not pulverized. He then showed examples of explosions by
controlled demolitions which are usually vertical and symmetrical. This was
clearly also present at the WTC and as such did not fit with NIST’s computer
models. He concluded that for the type of destruction we saw to have occurred at
the Twin Towers and building 7, one needed access to the elevator shafts and
from there to the core columns. It takes time to prepare a building for demolition
and the media should be asking: who had the means and the opportunity? He
emphasized that Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth don’t speculate, they
go by the laws of physics and an impartial investigation is required.

David Chandler,
a teacher of physics and mathematics, concentrated on WTC7 and demonstrated
that the NIST calculations for the duration of the collapse were faulty,
because it had occurred in two stages. First the penthouse disappeared, but the
building remained standing and a few seconds thereafter the entire structure
went straight down. The latter event occurred at free fall speed which is
evidence for controlled demolition. If there had been falling mass, as NIST
said, there would have been deceleration which did not occur.

Kevin
Ryan who had previously worked at Underwriters Laboratories (which certified
the steel used at the Twin Towers and who was mentioned in the May 1 issue),
pointed out further specifics in regard to the inadequacy of the NIST
explanation. The additional main points were that the explanation of sagging
floors having pulled the external columns inward and thereby initiated the
collapse of the Towers was not valid. NIST never performed any kind of physical tests but
relied only on computer models. When the initial models did not come up with the desired
result the data were manipulated to fit the desired results. When NIST was
asked to show how the model was arrived at, “they refused because it would
jeopardize public safety.” In as much as NIST did not share its results with
the scientific community, they cannot be independently verified. But this is
the hallmark of science. He also pointed to extreme heat which was found in the
basement of the WTC and which persisted for weeks after the collapse of the
buildings. Molten steel was observed which required temperatures in excess of
1500 degrees C, but NIST listed maximum gas temperatures as 1000 degree C
having occurred. On the other hand, if an explosive such as thermate had been
involved, temperatures of 3000 degrees could well have been achieved.

Jonathan Cole, an
engineer, also discussed, “The Official Account and the Experimental Method –
How did the Twin Towers fall?” His main points were that if the collapse had
been initiated by the sagging floors having pulled the peripheral columns
inward, the core columns should have remained standing. In addition, in as much
as National Geographic had produced a documentary which claimed that thermitic
material cannot cut through steel; he did the experiment in his backyard. He demonstrated
to the audience that the National Geographic scientists had been mistaken and
thermitic material can indeed do the job, albeit to the detriment of some of
his trees and bushes which had suffered in the process.

Retired
Assoc. Professor Dept. of Chemistry University of Copenhagen, Niels Harrit also
worked with physical data and found, “Incendiary/Explosive Residue Evidence in
the WTC Dust.” Iron laden microspheres were observed in the dust, which resulted
from molten steel, in addition to nanothermite residue. Furthermore, a team from
the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and Sloan Kettering Institute, NY, had
reported in 2010 on carbon nanotubes (probably derived from thermitic material)
in lung tissue from 9/11 emergency responders. http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1289%2Fehp.0901159.

Professor
Graeme McQueen presented examples from 156 eye-witnesses who reported that explosions
had occurred in the Twin Towers. Although some of these persons had testified
before the 9/11 Commission, their testimony was omitted in the final report.
The NIST report likewise did not include a single eye-witness testimony.

While
these presentations dealt with evidence for explosions at the WTC, Barbara
Honegger a “Former
White House Policy Analyst & Senior Military Affairs Journalist at Naval
Postgraduate School,” showed that this was also the case
at the Pentagon. The
official version of “A surprise Pearl-Harbor like Kamikaze plane attack on the
West Outer Wall of the Pentagon by Arab/Muslim terrorists in control of FL 77,
a large commercial 757 impacting near ground level at exactly 9:37:46,
diagonally penetrating through 3 of 5 rings, causing a single ‘Exit hole’ on
the inner wall of the middle C ring,” is not tenable. She had interviewed eye-witnesses who actually worked at the
Pentagon on that day and was told that the event had not been totally
unexpected, because bomb-sniffing dogs had been present earlier in the day. Furthermore,
the only video which was released by the FBI (five frames), which purportedly
shows the impact of AA 77, has significant problems. The pre-impact pictures
show only a white streak and the impact itself a huge fireball. There is no
evidence for a Boeing 757 in these frames. Ms. Honegger also pointed out that
an early version of these frames had been “leaked” in 2002, but it showed the wrong
date and time stamp, while the same official FBI released frames in 2006, had
time and date removed. Yet if these were authentic surveillance pictures they
would have had the time and date imbedded. The witnesses who had worked inside
the Pentagon at the time of “impact” reported bomb explosions and that the
damage was most severe in the innermost rings, rather than in the area of
impact. Finally the official term the FBI uses for the 9/11 disaster is
PENTTBOM which stands for Pentagon –Twin Towers – Bomb. Ms. Honegger’s
presentation was full of further details which will be omitted for now because
she presented an expanded version of her data in Vancouver. It will be related
in that context next month.

The
rest of the presentations covered a variety of other inconsistencies of the
9/11 commission report and on account of space considerations I shall present
only a few highlights. Prof. David Ray Griffin mentioned that Mohammed Atta,
the ringleader, was far from a devout Muslim. He had visited strip clubs, lived
for some time with a stripper and used alcohol as well as cocaine. Furthermore,
Atta’s
teacher in Hamburg, Professor Machule, said that this was not the Atta he knew
because the latter was indeed very religious and small, about 5’4, while the
American Atta was 5’8 or 5’10. At least six of the purported hijackers had
actually turned out to be alive after 9/11 and there were conflicting reports
for Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s whereabouts at the time of the Pentagon explosion.
The 9/11 commission stated that he was in his office while Richard Clarke in
his book “Against all Enemies” wrote that Rumsfeld had been in the conference
room participating in Clarke’s video-conference. The same discrepancy applies
to General Richard Meyers who was the acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff. There is also conflicting evidence between early versions and the
Commission Report in regard to when NORAD was notified about flights 77 and 93
having gone off course. Furthermore, the Commission Report gave an incorrect
time for when Vice-president Cheney was taken to the “bunker” and omitted the
crucial evidence provided by Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta. He
recalled that while he was with Cheney in the bunker prior to the Pentagon attack,
a “young man” came in intermittently saying that, “the plane is 50 miles out,”
“the plane is 30 miles out,” “the plane is 10 miles out. Do the orders still
stand?” Cheney turned, whipped his neck around and said “Of course the orders
still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?” What were these orders?
As far as the crash site of UA 93 in Shanksville is concerned it was incommensurate
with what one would have expected. Neither recognizable plane debris nor human
remains were encountered and there was no contamination of the soil from oil or
jet fuel. Additionally, the FBI had not only cordoned off the supposed crash
site but an additional one 6-8 miles distant. Why was this done? In sum and
substance: the Report is untrustworthy.

James Kolar,
a freelance writer, presented inconsistencies in the released passenger lists
of the doomed flights; the videos from Dulles airport which showed the
purported hijackers had no security stamp; and the bin-Laden videos did not
always show the same person. Paul Zarembka’s, Professor of
Economics State University of New York, presentation dealt with “Insider
Trading.” Although the 9/11 Commission mentioned it briefly it denied that
substantial insider trading had occurred before 9/11. Yet, even one month after
9/11 the mainstream press reported that huge profits were made via “Put
options.” Prof. Zarembka cited three studies two of which had so far been
published. One of these appeared in the 2006 Journal of Business and is readily
available. In it Professor Allen Poteshman of the University of Illinois concluded,
“That there is evidence of unusual option market activity in the days leading
up to September 11 that is consistent with investors trading on advance
knowledge of the attacks.”

Other speakers dealt with what one may
call local and global implications of 9/11. Lance De Haven-Smith, Professor
Public Administration & Policy Florida State University, felt that a term
was needed for crimes such as Watergate, Plamegate, Iran-Contra etc. and came
up with SCADS, which stands for State Crimes Against
Democracy. He defined the term as: concerted actions or inactions by government
insiders intended to manipulate democratic processes and undermine popular
sovereignty. They are the type of crime about which the conspiracy label
discourages us from speaking. He noted that they tend to end up in wars and
that there is a progressive trend from Watergate via
Iran-Contra to Iraq with increasingly larger numbers of different agencies
involved. Laurie
Manwell, a PhD candidate in behavioral neuroscience and Toxicology at the University
of Guelph, then presented, “SCADS and Psychological Resistance to Alternative Accounts.”
She provided a neurobehavioral explanation for why people are resistant to look
at evidence which conflicts with their firm opinions and why it is necessary to
overcome this barrier.

Peter Dale Scott, a former English
Professor at the University of California Berkley discussed, “9/11 and Deep State
Politics.” The key quote came from the Commission Staff team leader John Palmer,
that in regard to 9/11 we are dealing with, “either unprecedented
administrative incompetence or organized mendacity on the part of key figures
in Washington.” Michel Chossudovsky, emeritus Professor of Economics University
of Ottawa, dealt with “Global Consequences of 9/11.” He presented the reasons
for his conclusion that 9/11 was an “inside job” to create a pretext for the
global war on terrorism, which benefits the military establishment. Former
Representative Cynthia McKinney stated that when Congress asked questions they
were simply given “talking points” instead of serious answers.

This was also the point made by former Senator
Mike Gravel from Alaska in his presentation on, “State Deceptions in the Past
and Today.” He was unusually blunt in his summation about how Congress works,
which was due to both his age and the fact that he is no longer in Washington.
The key statements were, “This knowledge [the 9/11 information] has to get out
to the people. But if the people have no means to act on the information all
you create is a new generation of cynics. You must have a vehicle to act upon
it. The people without the ability to make law are disenfranchised. I got
elected, several times, and that’s how it works: I took money from special
interests and then looked down on you. I fooled you, I just got elected. That
is the way it works.”

This certainly has the ring of truth and
equally certainly does not want to be acknowledged. But sooner or later we will
have to face facts, rather than wishful fantasies, if we want to keep our
Republic. Senator Gravel’s recommendation will be dealt with in another
installment but it needs an amendment to the Constitution, which would
obviously take time to get ratified. Due to the increasing danger of a military
conflict with Iran prior to the November elections a separate issue will appear
on August 15, and the Vancouver Hearings will be discussed on September 1.

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